


Hogsmeade Cemetery

by hpfansazzy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Disabled Character, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Remembering those who died in the Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22402561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hpfansazzy/pseuds/hpfansazzy
Summary: Hugo Weasley and his best friend visit the graves of those who lost their lives in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Relationships: Hugo Weasley & Original Character
Kudos: 15





	Hogsmeade Cemetery

The anticipation in the air was palpable as the third-years queued up to be let out of the castle for their first trip into Hogsmeade. Naomi and Rhodri were the most excited out of their group of friends, having never set foot in the wizarding village before, unlike their friends who had magical parents. Naomi was particularly looking forward to visiting Honeydukes, the fabled sweet shop, which her wizard-born friends had waxed lyrical about on several occasions.

"Where's Lily got to?" asked Cass, as Naomi and Hugo joined their friends in the queue.

"She's come down with a cold," said Hugo, "and Madam Longbottom won't let her go out in the snow, even though she's dosed her with Pepper-Up Potion."

"Oh, poor Lily, that sucks," said Roisin, and the others either nodded or made noises indicating their agreement.

"Yeah, she's pretty pissed off about it," said Hugo.

"We'll buy her loads of sweets at Honeydukes," Naomi promised.

Their conversation was interrupted by Mr Biggs, the caretaker, demanding to see their Hogsmeade permission forms.

"You sure you can manage that thing in the snow, Woodson?" he sniggered, as he ticked Naomi's name off his list.

"Yes, thank you," Naomi replied curtly. She didn't appreciate him referring to her wheelchair as "that thing", nor his patronising attitude towards her disability.

"Dickhead," muttered Cass sympathetically as soon as they were out of earshot, "why can't they employ somebody who actually _likes_ children?"

*

The group of friends crunched through the snow as they walked down the road to Hogsmeade, except for Naomi, whose wheelchair was levitating a few inches above the snow as she steered it expertly around bends.

Hugo looked sombre and pensive, and was not joining in with the others' conversation.

"It's such a shame that Lily isn't allowed to come with us," Naomi said to him sympathetically, assuming that this was what was bothering her best friend.

"Yeah, it is," agreed Hugo, "but that's not what I was thinking about."

Naomi knew that Hugo would talk to her about what was on his mind if and when he wanted to, so she nodded and said nothing, and they continued in a companionable silence.

As they proceeded further down the road, they approached the Hogsmeade Cemetery. Naomi knew that it contained a monument to each person who had died in the 1998 Battle of Hogwarts, although not all of those people were actually buried in this cemetery.

Hugo leaned towards Naomi and murmured, "I'm going to go and pay my respects to my Uncle Fred. Do you want to come with me?"

Naomi felt touched at being asked to join Hugo for such a personal and significant thing, and she agreed.

"Naomi and I have got to do something," Hugo announced to their other friends, "we'll catch you up."

*

The gate creaked stiffly in the silent cemetery as Hugo pushed it open through the snow. It wasn't wide enough for Naomi's chair, and the chair's inbuilt levitation feature only allowed it to rise a few inches above the ground, so they had to resort to _Wingardium Leviosa_ to get her over the wall and inside the cemetery. A little risky for such a heavy object, but reasonably safe with two of them casting the spell.

The small cemetery, purpose-built for the deceased of the Battle of Hogwarts, was sheltered by an oak tree which rose from the centre of the graveyard. It seemed to Naomi as though the tree were watching over the people who were buried beneath the snow.

Hugo led her towards his uncle's grave.

FRED GIDEON WEASLEY  
1978-1998  
BELOVED SON AND BROTHER  
DEARLY MISSED

They stood in silence for a few minutes. Naomi wondered how Hugo was feeling, and whether he mourned the uncle that he had never met. She wondered whether a parent ever recovered from losing a child, or a sibling from losing a brother. She wondered, as she had previously, what it was like for Freddie, being named after his father's dead twin brother.

"Do you... do you want to lay some flowers?" Naomi asked tentatively.

"Nah, I've got something better." Hugo extracted a small firework from his coat pocket, held it at arm's length, and carefully touched it with the tip of his wand. The firework exploded silently in a shower of blue and gold sparks, which settled on Fred Weasley's gravestone and made it glitter. It looked beautiful, sparkling there amid the white snow in the cold morning sunlight.

"Can I... have a moment alone?" said Hugo, not looking at Naomi. She squeezed his shoulder in a gesture of understanding, and retreated from Fred's grave.

She looked around the rest of the graveyard. She recognised some names, such as Severus Snape, from History of Magic lessons. She recognised another grave as belonging to the parents of Lily's god-brother Teddy: "REMUS JOHN LUPIN AND NYMPHADORA TONKS LUPIN". Somebody had laid a wreath of candyfloss-pink flowers at their grave.

These people had all died twenty-three years ago, Naomi thought. Her parents had taken her to a World War II museum once, but this felt different. Recent. Tangible. This war had happened during her friends' parents lifetimes; some of her friends' parents had fought in it. Some of her _teachers_ had fought in it. Her own parents were lucky that they hadn't been caught up in any of Voldemort's attacks upon Muggles.

She had now reached the area of the cemetery where there were stones commemorating people who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts but were buried elsewhere. One such stone informed her that a person named Colin Creevey had been born in July 1981 and died in May 1998. He had only been sixteen when he died. Less than three years older than Naomi was now. He shouldn't even have been fighting, she realised, because the teachers had evacuated all the underage students, she knew that. She wondered whether he had somehow been unable to escape in the evacuation, or whether he had purposefully stayed behind to fight. She couldn't imagine doing that herself. She was sure that if she were in that situation, even if she were of age, she'd be scared shitless and in the queue to evacuate. Lily and Cass would probably fight, though, if they were allowed to. She shuddered at the thought. Then again, she reflected, would Cass and Roisin, being in Slytherin, have been corrupted by the pure-blood doctrine? Would they have hated Naomi for who her family were? Naomi found it hard to imagine this.

She contemplated how, if they hadn't won the Battle, she wouldn't be at Hogwarts. She and her parents might even have been killed as soon as she had started showing signs of magic as a child.

These people had laid down their lives so that Naomi's generation could live free of terror.

She wanted to leave something to honour Colin. She couldn't conjure flowers, because she hadn't yet learned how to conjure things, but perhaps she could transfigure something. She pulled a handful of snow from the ground and pointed her wand at it, concentrating hard. Slowly, it mutated into a single, pure white rose, which she laid at the foot of Colin's stone.

*

Thirty minutes later, Naomi and Hugo were sat in the warm, cosy pub with their friends, sipping Butterbeer and laughing at Rhodri's joke about a troll, a centaur, and a leprechaun.

All was well, for this generation.

**Author's Note:**

> For more of Hugo and Naomi, please see my fic 'For Merlin's sake, we're not together!'


End file.
